1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a testing device for testing of a telephone subscriber loop/access line using Caller Identification (CID) Activation.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Various telephone line testing devices are known in the art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,857,011 to Kennedy et al. Discloses a Multi-port caller ID based telephone ringback test device. This multi-port Caller ID based test unit is installable in the central office of a public switched telephone network. The test unit is capable of determining the telephone number, subscriber name and various other information associated with the subscriber line used to access the test device. These tests include exercising a caller identification, call waiting class of service, testing the ability of the telephone circuit to receive incoming calls, and testing the operation of a message waiting indicator of a telephone unit coupled to the telephone circuit.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,790,634 to Kinser Jr. et al. discloses a combination system for pro actively and reactively maintaining the working status of customer network facilities in response to customer request reporting a customer trouble The combined maintenance system includes an attendant station receiving the customer request and representing a reactively determined trouble. This station builds a first trouble report, and a first and second test systems. The first test system tests a second communication line in the communication cable representing a potentially pro actively determined trouble and builds a second trouble report. The second test system tests at least one of the first and second communication lines and determines whether at least one of the first and second trouble reports should be dispatched to a customer work group together with existing related pro active and reactive trouble reports to the customer work group using trouble routing criteria.
Finally, U.S. Pat. No. 5,146,490 to Beckman discloses a passive telephone line monitor for keeping a log of telephone line activity of both incoming and outgoing calls with a microcomputer. This microcomputer is controlled by an onboard program read only memory (ROM).
The present invention differs from the prior art because the present invention is related to a subscriber loop/access line testing device that is activated by unique caller identification CID(s) to perform tests. As an example, these tests include testing the transmission quality of a subscriber loop/access line.